Week 1 (June 9 – June 15) – 48 hours

This week my carpentry internship at New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie has begun. Our crew consists of seven people: Technical Director – John McCullough, ATD – Pat Brennan, two master carpenters – Claire and Mike, and 3 interns – William, Chabreah and myself. Sometimes we are sharing the shop with painters and props crew.

NYSAF has a fairly big staff team for its summer season – around 90 people, 30 of whom are interns. We are all lodged in Vassar College student housing, three/four people per house. I’m sharing the house with Rachel, who is Assistant Sound Supervisor, and Regina – Assistant Costume Shop Supervisor. Here, at Vassar, I’ve already met a lot of students and professionals from all over the US, and I’m very happy to be a part of this friendly community.

Powerhouse Summer Season 2014 will have three mainstage productions, two musical workshops and a reading festival, all in the course of 8 weeks. This week we were working primarily on the first mainstage show“The Babylon Line” by Richard Greenberg. The setting for this show is a large classroom, with three walls (all having practical doors and windows), a soffit, and a deck made of legged platforms and covered with MDF. During the week we built a lot of hollywood flats with different levels of complexity (the most interesting was a door flat that combines 1×3, 1×6 and 1×8 pine in its framing), platforms and 200 legs for the deck, six pieces that will form a soffit when assembled, portal, 4 escape stairs, windows with plexiglass, doors and chalkboards. NYSAF standard for finish quality is pretty high – to a tolerance of 1/16″ on overall dimensions, which means that tolerances for individual parts must be much tighter.

During this week I learned a lot of practical things that I lacked before. I was extensively using many different tools and hardware, such as table saw, circular saw, miter saw, jig saw, drills with different bits, routers, brad guns, nail guns, staplers, sanders, and many more. Also, I was introduced to different types of paperwork used to make the work process in the shop and on stage as smooth as possible.

All interns were required to sign up for two master classes offered this week. I chose rigging and lighting, both of which were very informative. During rigging class we were flying in/out and unloading the batten that had a snow drum attached to it, using Martel’s single-purchase counterweight system. In this class I also learned a new knot, called stopper hitch, which is used to tie the safety rope on a counterweight hand line. Lighting class was pretty much just an intro to stage lighting, however, it was a lot of fun, especially when we were tying clove hitches with one hand.

First week was extremely productive, and everything was done on time. Next week we have to finish all the scenery for “The Babylon Line” and then load it into the theatre.

Week 2 (June 16 – June 22) – 61 hour

Last week was pretty much insane: we had to finish all the scenery for the first show “The Babylon Line” (which was 95% built during the first week), install audience risers in two theaters – Powerhouse and Shiva, hang soft goods and snow drums, do trial assembly of“The Babylon Line” set in the shop, load in all the scenery and get it ready for tech (which starts next Monday, June 23). At the same time Mike, one of our master carpenters’, was building the set for the next show – “In Your Arms”.

Vassar college has 4 theaters in its campus, 3 of which are hosting NYSAF Summer’14 events: Powerhouse Theater – medium size black box, where two mainstage shows will take place, Martel Theater – large proscenium, where the third mainstage production “In Your Arms” will run, and Susan Stein Shiva Theater – small black box which will host Readings Festival and a couple of smaller shows.

Our task for Tuesday was to install audience risers in Shiva and then in Powerhouse. I’ve never done this before, so I learned a lot during this day. Audience risers system in Shiva was pretty simple: different height aluminum legs were attached to 4×8 platforms, then a kick rail was added (using couplers) to the back of each platform, and after that platforms were connected together using riser hinges. The last step was to attach guardrails on the sides and back of the entire structure. Riser system in the Powerhouse was much more interesting: it involved z-frames, two rows of different height understructures made of diagonal and horizontal snap-lock braces, on top of which three rows of platforms with locator nodes were installed.

Besides risers, last week involved a lot of heavy lifting and transportation of the “The Babylon Line” set from the shop to the Powerhouse (PoHo). Everything was transported on carts, and it was a lot of fun, because all the paths in the campus are curved (according to the legend, the architect thought that women look more beautiful when walking along a curved line). First, we brought all the deck platforms and legs in PoHo, assembled the deck and covered it with black painted MDF, then we marked and traced all necessary lines for the set installation, installed the walls, and, after that, the soffit. On Saturday and Sunday we were doing minor things, like blackboards placement, doors and windows installation, moulding attachment, etc.

My favorite task this week was rigging. We were flying soft goods,three snow drums, and speakers for the sound department. Powerhouse Theater has a very cool suspension grid (pictured on the right), which is now my favorite place in this venue. We were lifting battens with soft goods in teams of five people, and snow drums in teams of two. We secured everything in place with clove hitches plus half hitches. I learned how tremendously important is to know how to tie knots (before I was using clove hitches only in lighting applications, where they are not life-threatening). Speaking of lighting, this week I also had a 2 hours extra call to help lighting department, during which I brought some 6” Fresnels from Martel to PoHo, changed two lamps, and installed lighting tech table.

It was a very busy week with no day off, but now everything is ready for tech, that starts tomorrow. Despite an insane rhythm in which everyone lives right now, company management team has found the time and organized wonderful barbecue for all the staff and creative team. Also, every Sunday we have bagel brunch with coffee and fruits. I’m looking forward to the next week, during which we will primarily work on “In Your Arms”.

Week 3 (June 23 – June 29) – 61 hour

This week we were working on “In Your Arms” set in Martel theater, and also doing some notes for “The Babylon Line” in PoHo. Notes included flats back painting, borders adjustment, replacement of a broken snow drum, adding some extra masking behind the windows, and doors motion smoothing. I learned, that in order for a door to open slowly, a paint brush could be screwed in at the bottom of the door, which will considerably slow down its opening speed. Working on notes wasn’t very exciting, but I was able to see a completed set (everything was painted, and props and furniture were on stage), which looked very nice. Hopefully, I will be able to post some pictures of it here. Also, I really want to see the show, but unfortunately it conflicts with “In Your Arms” tech week.

Much more interesting work was happening in Martel theater: we were loading in “In Your Arms” set, which consists of two “brick” walls with different shape openings and a balcony, a trap room(!), castered staircase, and paper inserts that fit perfectly in each opening. The walls are also a projection surface (using Watchout), so probably some video mapping will be involved in the show.

First two days we were building and adjusting paper inserts for different openings in the walls. All of them have different shapes (circle, arch, rectangles), and are practical. All of them will be removed from the “solid” wall at different points in the show, making the set more flexible. After all inserts were done and tested, we started a trap room project. I was working on the lid installation, and it was very interesting, because it had a very well-thought and actually very simple system that makes it work. It involves 6 hinges and an extra piece of 2×4.

On Wednesday, besides notes in PoHo and some minor construction tasks (I built a couple of 10′ jacks), we were also helping paint department with masonite base painting. There were 30 sheets of masonite to be paint, so every intern was required to paint 10. I was surprised that we were using white paint for base, which means that the show’s deck will most likely be of light color (which, in turn, means that it could be a nightmare for lighting people, because of excessive bouncing).

On Thursday, we were working on the trap room project. First, we went to the Martel’s trap room (which is now used as storage space for old scenery and lighting fixtures) and cleared a lot of space, because a huge castered staircase will be placed there in order for an actor to get on stage. Three people will be operating the trap room: two will open a trap door (a two-steps operation) and a third person will roll a staircase. After the space was cleared, we came back on stage and removed two large metal platforms in the middle of the floor, freeing a path to the trap room. After that, John and Pat flied the staircase into the opening in the floor, using two battens and three ropes. The last step was to install two new platforms (one with the trap door in it) into the floor and secure them in place. After everything on stage was done, Claire and I went back to the trap room and put together two 5′ heigh platforms for trap door operators (trap room ceiling is approx. 10′ heigh, so these platforms are needed in order for the operators to reach the trap door).

The rest of the week we were installing the main wall with the balcony, covering the floor with white masonite, and doing a lot of adjustments. Paint crew was working overnight every day. On Saturday, I did a lot of routing and sanding on all the wall openings in order to simulate old bricks’ texture. On Sunday, I was lucky enough to climb to Martel’s grid and do some rigging (took two linesets to pipeweight).

I learned a lot during this week, which was also very busy. As for after-work activities, we had a big celebration on “The Babylon Line”opening night, with a lot of delicious food from local restaurants and some beers and wines. Next week I will be in the run crew for “In Your Arms” – a big dance show with a lot of big names in it.

Week 4 (June 30 – July 6) – 65 hours

This week has been a tech week for “In Your Arms” – a big dance musical with lots of Broadway stars in the cast and creative team. Will and I were assigned to be in the run crew for this show. We were required to report directly to Stage Manager Lizzy and/or three ASMs: Bryan, Madison and Natalie, and were exempt from working in the shop for the entire week.

Tech week started on Tuesday (we had Monday off), and at the beginning it seemed to be very slow. In the morning we attended a meet and greet meeting, where we met the entire cast and crew and introduced ourselves. Short after that the first tech rehearsal has begun. It was more like a regular rehearsal than a tech, because a lot of attention was paid to choreography, rather than to the technical aspects of the show. All I did during the first day was some sweeping and moping of the stage and opening/closing doors for the actors backstage. On Wednesday I’ve got a couple of real cues, like setting up a fresnel on stage during the show and closing a plug, but it was still not too much. Most of the time I was either reading a book, chatting with Will and the ASMs, or watching the band backstage playing awesome music for the show.

“In Your Arms” consists of ten very different in style vignettes written by ten different playwrights. On Thursday evening we were a little bit more than a half way through the show, and everyone started to worry about the tempo of tech rehearsals: we had opening night on Saturday, while Friday was 4th of July (= short work day). Another disappointing thing was that our cues were changed too many times during the rehearsals, and we really wanted to have a run-through before the actual show in order to be confident about these cues. Lizzy and ASMs did a really great job on updating our run sheets a couple of times during each day, but no one could still see a big picture.

Our last tech rehearsal ended on Saturday, three hours before the opening night, so it became clear that our first run-through will happen during the opening night itself. We received the last version of 16-pages run sheets 20 minutes before the show, and had a brief meeting with our great stage manager Lizzy (who was absolutely positive and kindly asked everyone to do his or her best during the show), and a couple of minutes after “Places” were called.

When the show began, I understood how much I missed being in the run crew (last time I did it in 2012). I had a total of 19 cues during the show, which turned out to be very fast-paced and everyone backstage was running back and forth like crazy. At different moments in the show, I was opening/closing plugs both stage left and stage right, operating a trap door (from the trap room, which is in the theatre’s basement), dropping a ribbon on stage from a catwalk, moving furniture from different places in the theatre backstage, setting up a fresnel on stage behind a shadow curtain, and much more. In other words, I had to be everywhere, without killing anyone and without being seen or heard by the audience. During the opening night/first run-through, everyone really did his or her best, and the show ran smoothly, without technical issues.

On Sunday we had two more shows (matinee and evening), during which we were much more relaxed, because now we knew the exact sequence and approximate timing, so we could manage time more wisely. A lot less backstage running was involved in these shows comparing to the first one. After the last show (at 9.30pm), we had an overnight strike call for “The Babylon Line” in PoHo. All departments were involved in this strike at the same time, and it was a real fun that ended at 3.30am. We started with striking small things (mouldings, blackboards, doors, windows and stairs) first, then a soffit and walls (one by one), then the deck and masking. Everyone was wearing hard hats during the strike, because lighting department was working on the grid, and there was a possibility of loose hardware falling down. I was amazed how well John handled the strike: everything was done very fast and at the same time absolutely safe, despite the fact that so many people were destroying things at the same time.

Next week I will continue being in the run crew for “In Your Arms”, since we have 7 more shows, and, in the morning I will probably participate in the load-in of the last mainstage show “The Danish Widow” in PoHo.

Week 5 (July 7 – July 13) – 48 hours

This entire week I had been in the run crew for the 7 remaining shows of “In Your Arms”, and I also had a couple of extra calls for building/loading-in of “The Danish Widow”. As for “In Your Arms”, we had one show on each work day starting from Wednesday, and two shows on Saturday and Sunday.

We (Will and I) had to come 1.5 hours before the curtain and do our duties: sweep/mop the stage and backstage, hang a huge shadow drop on the velcro tape, examine the trap door for safety issues (loose bolts etc.), preset two floor-mounted fresnels, move furniture to the right places, etc. After that, when “Places” were called, we executed our cues, according to the run sheet. All shows ran smoothly, I’ve never missed a cue, which is obviously a good thing.

On Wednesday, I had an extra call at 1pm, during which I built two small hard-covered theatrical flats and one hollywood flat. These will be the parts of the huge boat for “The Danish Widow”. On Thursday, Will, I and two Steves from City Tech (over-hire for lighting department) put together the OSB floor for “The Danish Widow” in PoHo. We had about 30 sheets of OSB, and some of them had to be trimmed to size. First, the process was kind of slow, because we had 1/16″ – 1/8″ gaps between sheets here and there, and weren’t sure why (we checked all the dimensions a couple of times, and everything was aligned correctly). But then we consulted with John, who said than the sheets themselves are not perfect at all, and small gaps are not a problem. After that conversation we finished the remaining work very fast. On Friday call I did some 5/4″ framing for the boat pieces, as well as some routing and simple building. On Saturday morning we had a short extra-call during which we helped to transport some boat pieces from the shop to PoHo. One piece was so big and heavy that we lost two casters on the dolly while transporting it.

Because of being in the run crew, I almost didn’t participate in the building and load-in of “The Danish Widow” set. It’s a little bit sad, because the set is awesome – it’s a huge boat made of different materials (pine, styrofoam, plexiglass, etc.). However, tech rehearsals of this show will start tomorrow, and hopefully I will be able to work on some notes for the show.

Next week we will strike beautiful “In Your Arms” set (pictured on the left) and then work on “The Danish Widow”.

Week 6 (July 14 – July 20) – 28 hours

This week we didn’t have much to do, because the season is slowly getting to its end. On Monday, we struck “In Your Arms”, and then did some notes for “The Danish Widow”. We began striking the main wall by removing all plugs, railings, staircases, mouldings and other minor stuff first, then struck the stage right end flat and the door flat above the balcony, then the balcony itself (“Noise!”). After that I removed two hog throughs attached to the back of the wall (they were connecting the flats together and preventing the wall from shacking). Then we dismounted the flats one by one and sent them to the dumpster. When the stage was cleared of the main wall, we took down the entire masking wall at once. Four people were keeping their hands on the back of the wall, while I was unscrewing the flats and jacks from the floor. After the last screw was removed, we tipped the wall down a little bit, and then released it on “one, two, three”. I thought, there is going to be a lot of noise, but surprisingly there was none (the wall acted more like an enormous sheet of cardboard, then like a wall, when going down). After we unbolted and dumped all the flats, there was time for the last stage of the strike: unscrew all the masonite from the floor and put all the full sheets on the cart. We didn’t strike the trap door on Monday, because John wanted to do it later and to actually save the trap door platforms for future use (or for some other reasons).

After the strike, we went to PoHo, and did some notes for“The Danish Widow”. I was working with Claire on the rails for a steep escape stairs, attached to the boat. On Tuesday morning, I came at 8am and did some notes (folded curtains, and put grommets and webbing on a piece of duvetyne). After that, John sent me home, because I had an overnight call for painting. I came back at 11.30pm and was helping Allison (scenic painter for “The Danish Widow”) with boat painting until 9.30am Wednesday. During this call I did a lot of painting, using not only regular paints, but also foam coat for styrofoam parts of the boat, glaze and varnish for the floor, and caulk to seal the seems. Because the set is huge (pictured on the right), I was using a 12′ ladder and a roller/brush on a pole, and still had difficulties reaching the top of the set. The most interesting task was to paint a 7.25″ wide straight line along the SL face of the vertical part of the boat. This line was going from the bottom of the boat all the way to the top. There was no problem in painting the first 15′ or so of the line: I went to the top of the 12′ ladder, and we snapped a 15′ line with a chalk line going all the way to the floor. Then I put blue tape along the line and quickly painted it with dark grey. A real problem was to get the top 5′ or so of the line: because the set piece was ~20′ tall and tilted, it was impossible to get to the top using either a ladder or a genie. The problem was solved by making a special jig: a 10″ wide 8′ long strip of MDF was attached to а 1x handle (~4′ long). This jig was operated from the lighting bridge, which was located ~3′ away from the top of the set. The person holding the jig suspended the MDF strip from the top, and I aligned its bottom with the line that was already drawn. MDF strip gave us a straight edge going all the way to the top, and I had no problem with painting the line.

Then I had the entire Wednesday off, because my overnight paint call was canceled. On Thursday, we did some notes for “The Danish Widow”, including changing the frost behind the portholes of the boat, and attaching and painting foam cove moulding. After that, we cleaned the shop a little bit, and went home. On Friday, we only had a 1 hour call in Martel, during which we painted the floor black. The rest of Friday, as well as Saturday and Sunday, were days off. On Saturday morning, I went to the designer Q&A, during which “The Danish Widow”‘s LD Don Holder, SD Bart Fasbender, and TD John McCullough were talking to apprentices and interns about the collaboration process in theatre. On Friday evening we had a big celebration in the “pool”, and then, on Saturday, Claire and I went to Hyde Park – a small town not far from the Vassar College – to visit the Vanderbilt Mansion, which was very beautiful. Today (Sunday), I’m planning to go see “The Danish Widow” at 5pm.

Next week will be probably slow-paced, because we have pretty much nothing to do: “The Danish Widow”, which is our last mainstage show, will be running for one more week, and we are not working on anything else. I’m planing to spend some time in the shop anyway, making some wood joints (mortise-and-tenon, box joint, and probably dovetail) just for practice.

Week 7 (July 21 – July 28) – 13 hours

This week was very low key in terms of work, but very heigh key in terms of besides-work activities. On Monday, we (scenery crew) went to Yale School of Drama, where we had an awesome tour of their theatres and shops, and, at the end, we met with Ben Sammler – chair of the Technical Design and Production department – and asked him some questions.

After that we met with other crews somewhere near NYC, and played laser tag together. The first game was lighting crew vs. scenery crew, and the second was staff vs. inters. It was my first time playing this game, which I enjoyed a lot. The next day, John took us to the Shawangunk ridge, where we did some rock-climbing. During this day we climbed two routes in turns (John shared his climbing gear with us and explained how to use it) – Rhododendron crack (YDS 5.6) and Dirty Chimney (YDS 5.0). We also attempted another route, Short Job, but were scared by a furious turkey vulture. At the end of our journey, John also climbed Laurel (YDS 5.7) – the most challenging route of the day. During this day we learned a lot about the climbing gear, such as camalots, climbing nuts and hexes, runners, etc., as well as about different techniques of rock-climbing. When I started climbing Rhododendron, my first thought was “there is no way I will make it to the top”, but then, driven by adrenalin, I somehow did it, which I still can’t believe. I’ve never done rock-climbing before, and I couldn’t even imagine how hard and awesome this activity really is.

On Wednesday, we had a four hour work call, during which we painted floor in the shop and then helped electrics crew to move the loft blocks and load bars in place. On Thursday, we did some more painting and cleaning of the shop, and after that had our last barbecue of the season. Since Friday and Saturday were days off, I decided to go to NYC, and had a great time there.

Sunday was a big day – we had to strike “The Danish Widow”. First, we went to the grid and flew down an overhead part of the boat. After striking this, we started to get rid of the stage left part. There was a lot of styrofoam involved in the construction of this unit, so we got a huge pile of small pieces of styrofoam after striking it. There were too many of them, so we decided to put these pieces in garbage bins instead of caring them out. When everything was cleared, we struck a huge vertical part of the boat, which was tied up with four ropes to the load bars on top of the grid. It was made of four 20′ or so tall curved flats screwed together, and the entire unit was tilted towards upstage. The strike of that one began by cutting approximately 3′ from the bottom of the unit with a zall saw. Only three out of four flats were cut this way, so the unit was still getting some support. After that we went to the grid again, loosened the ropes, and very carefully flew the unit down on its face. John was guiding the unit in place by pulling an additional rope attached to the bottom of the unit. After everything was sledged and cleared out of the theatre, we began to unscrew OSB sheets from the floor and pile them on carts. Then all the remains of “The Danish Widow” set were transported by company minivan and by carts to a big dumpster behind the shop, and the strike was over. It was a very nice strike, because not too many people were involved into it.

Next week is the last week of the season, and we’re going to do a lot of hard work, like audience risers disassembly, return of stock platforms and flats, inventory etc.

Week 8 (July 28 – August 1) – 22 hours

This week was the last week of the season, and the end of my internship at NYSAF. On Monday, we disassembled audience risers in the Shiva and in the Powerhouse, and then painted the floor in the Streep room black. A little bit annoying thing about risers is that, for some reason, they have to be swapped: Shiva’s risers go to PoHo, and PoHo’s risers are stored in the Shiva. Risers’ swapping activity involves a lot of collective pushing of the super-heavy carts and some collective lifting of these carts on every bump. Fortunately, other departments (props and costumes) were helping us with this, so it didn’t take a lot of time and wasn’t exhausting.

Tuesday was also somewhat a big day: we had to return stock platforms, flats and jacks back to the barn. The barn, owned by Vassar, is located about 1.5 miles away from the college, and is used as scenery storage space. Then we went back to the shop and did some more cleaning, including emptying dust collector’s bags. After that we helped electrics department to move some pipes out of PoHo to the Shiva and Martel, and the day was over.

On Wednesday, we painted floors black both in the Shiva and in the Powerhouse, and the entire company went to play bowling. We played two games, and I couldn’t believe how bad I was in this: I barely broke 50, while others were in their 80s, 90s and 100s. The worst thing was that the electrics finished their game a bit earlier, and decided to watch our, which made me feel even more miserable:)) On Thursday, we painted the Martel’s floor black, brought stud walls to the shop, did inventory and some final clean-up. In the evening, the entire company went to the restaurant and celebrated the official end of the season. After the dinner, we all went to the Martel, where we watched an awesome slideshow about our journey at NYSAF, and everyone got a sweatshirt with the company logo on it. On Friday, I packed my stuff and checked out, then went to the leftover barbecue where I said “bye” to everyone, and headed back to the city. Gosh, what a summer!)